


Fragments of a shattered life

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Dancing, Dimitri Week 2019, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21819826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Battered, bruised, torn away from hope and comfort, Dimitri has suffered. But he's made it through, and made so many connections along the way.Collection of fics for Dimitri Week 2019! Recent chapter: rest. Felix has been tending to their son all day, and Dimitri knows he desperately needs to rest.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Blue Lions Students, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Dedue Molinaro, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 21
Kudos: 58





	1. Saviour King

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of fics for Dimitri Week (which can prob most easily be found on twitter, @daily_dimitri). I've picked one prompt for each day and I'll post them all in this fic!
> 
> Is the prompt savior king rather than saviour king? Perhaps. Am I capable of using US English spellings? No :)
> 
> Chapter log if you wanna skip any:  
> 1: Saviour King, post-war, gen (pre-relationship Felix/Dimitri if you wanna read into it)  
> 2: Dancing, largely war-phase including final battle, gen (particular focus on Edelgard)  
> 3: Childhood, pre-canon, gen, warning for discussion of injury and canonical character death  
> 4: Modern au, pre-relationship Felix/Dimitri  
> 5: Alone, war-phase, gen, warning for minor discussion of violence  
> 6: Last moments, pre-canon to final battle, gen, warning for violence, injury, and canonical character death  
> 7: Rest, post-canon, Felix/Dimitri, featuring an OC courtesy of Ostodvandi

People were calling him the ‘Saviour King’ now, and Dimitri for the life of him could not understand why, not even for a second. They said it was because he had saved Fódlan, because he had saved the Kingdom, saved them from the Empire, saved them from anarchy…

He wasn’t a saviour. He hadn’t saved anyone. He hadn’t even been able to save himself, all those moons ago, when the thing that everyone had needed most was exactly that. He’d needed someone else to pull him out of that darkness, to guide him on the path that seemed to have ended with this title

It felt like a title he did not deserve, when he knew there were so many people he had failed to save. When those he had failed to save haunted him almost every waking moment, in some form or another. But it persisted. Somehow, the foolish title persisted, even with all the facts out there in the open. It wasn’t a secret that he had killed, but the commendation wouldn’t leave him alone.

He was not...he felt, honestly and truly, that he had killed more than he had saved. That, more than anything, should have discounted him from being seen even as a failed saviour. He could not be called a saviour if his body count outweighed those who in some way owed their life to him. Even then, he had only been hailed as their saviour because he had brought the war to an end; to do that, he had done little more than kill in ever greater numbers until the bodies piled up by Edelgard’s door.

How could he be seen as the one who had saved anyone? Why not someone who had actually saved lives to end that goddess forsaken war? He was not the only person, even, who had been responsible for their victory. Surely the new Archbishop should be seen as the saviour of Fódlan. Or the healers in their army. Perhaps the healers in the Empire’s army, who had aided in reducing the casualties to the extent that reconstructing the Empire was not an impossible task.

But not him. He was, under no interpretation, a ‘Saviour King’.

“You don’t seem to like it when people call you that,” Mercedes mused. She was sat opposite him at dinner that evening, and someone, making a brief toast for his health, had mentioned called him the Saviour King. He must have pulled a face. He hoped the person who called the toast, whose name Dimitri could barely even remember, hadn’t seen.

“It feels undeserved,” he admitted, picking a little at the vegetables in front of him with his fork. He’d eat, of course, but eating was a challenge enough when he couldn’t enjoy it, and ever harder when his stomach was turning at the thought of an image of himself, widely believed, that was completely unwarranted.

“Absolutely not,” Mercedes said, her response immediate and firm. She didn’t always sound sure of herself, scatterbrained as she could often be, but she did then. Dimitri raised an eyebrow, hoping she would elaborate. “You’ve saved so many people. Myself included, of course.”

He wasn’t particularly in the mood for flattery, especially after the rather embarrassing toast he’d just received (a toast which reminded him, just a little, of his struggles to get out of bed on the coldest winter mornings, his occasional and unwelcome shortness of breath), but it didn’t seem like Mercedes had quite picked up on that. If she had, she ignored it.

“It’s only because of you and the Prof- Archbishop that I’ve had the confidence to follow my own vocation,” she explained. “Perhaps it’s silly of me, but seeing the way you strive to help everyone, want everyone’s suffering to end...I know I can’t just take the easy option and follow what my adoptive father wants for me.”

Dimitri nodded, though he wasn’t particularly convinced. Mercedes was the kind of person who liked seeing people happy; he hadn’t known her to lie to achieve this, but when faced with the prospect of accepting such a title... “I don’t think you should pin the credit for that on me,” he said. “It’s you who’s kind enough to want this for yourself, and you who has the willpower to follow it through. I’m no example of anything you didn’t already want.”

Mercedes looked at him for a moment and hummed. “Dedue, what do you think?” she asked, leaning forward slightly to speak to the man on Dimitri’s left.

Dimitri wanted to protest that asking Dedue wasn’t fair; Dedue was the one person he’d actually managed to save from something, and yet Dedue would always cover up the fact that he had saved him in return. But he didn’t speak up - the last thing he wanted was to speak over Dedue in any way, or dictate how he should feel.

“There is no doubt to me that you deserve the title,” Dedue said firmly. “I don’t believe you need me to recount again how I feel on this matter, but-”

“At least try to live up to it,” Felix said, piping up on Dimitri’s right for the first time that evening. Mercedes shot him a look. “What? He’s been given a title he doesn’t think he deserves despite all the people he’s already saved. So he should try and feel like he deserves it more by acting on it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Mercedes said. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel like you deserve it now, Dimitri. There are plenty of people who I’m sure would tell you the same thing. Maybe even Felix would. Why, only the other day-”

“Nonsense,” Felix said, and when Dimitri looked over at him, there was definitely a small blush decorating his cheekbones. “I said no such thing.”

“I never said that you said anything,” Mercedes said, her smile bright. Her laughter, combined with Felix’s sound of what could only be described as pure frustration, gave Dimitri the distinct impression that maybe something had been said. Maybe revealing that had been Mercedes’ intention all along.

He was, perhaps, still not entirely convinced that he deserved the title. In that, Felix was right; he should work to earn it. There was plenty he could do, in his position of power, to improve the lives of others. Save lives, even. And while there were plenty of areas in which he had failed, that didn’t mean his time was up.

There had been a time when he thought he was capable of nothing more than cruelty. Bursts of cruelty, uncontrollable, that would persist he eventually keeled over and died. There was no saviour in him when he’d seen the battlefield as his only future.

But that wasn’t his future anymore. No, his future would be spent far away from the battlefield, if he had his way. He’d spend it at the negotiating table, in councils with his closest advisors, in audience with the people of his country. That way, he could save people, rather than just kill them. Once he’d done all of that, perhaps, he would have the right to such a title. Then, he’d be able to call himself a Saviour King.


	2. Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day two: dancing. Dancing had never been something Dimitri was particularly good at.

Education for a young noble child in Faerghus came in three parts: the first was combat training, the second literacy and numeracy, and third came etiquette. Needless to say, most Faerghan nobles found themselves lacking in at least one of those areas; usually it was the third.

Dimitri had, on the whole, been good at all three. Fighting was as natural as breathing. He knew every movement he could make, he knew his body better than any enemy ever could. He knew his limits and strove to break them. He learned every pattern, every step. Academics was something he wasn’t quite so strong at, but he knew where he stood. If he worked at it, he would understand. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t.

Etiquette...was far more of a mixed bag. Dimitri was not the strongest when it came to formalities. He could speak in a way that was perfectly non offensive, if he tried (though it was rather exhausting - sometimes he wished he could drop the facade and be a little more like Felix, brutally honest and uncompromising), and he could usually remember the correct way in which to eat various dishes.

The problem was dancing, that essential activity of the noble gathering. Dimitri was not a natural dancer. He knew how his body worked when he held a weapon in both hands. He knew how far to extend his arms when thrusting a spear, how long he could fight before his lungs gave out and he needed a break. Yet that somehow all went out of the window when learning to dance.

It was unhelpful to think of dancing like fighting in the way he knew many of his friends did (he had, once or twice, seen Felix dance not with a woman or a man but with a sword in hand). His movements in combat were sharp and deliberate. Dancing had to be more...open. He couldn’t stab his partner.

Dancing required a different mindset, and trained as he was to associate the physical with the hostile, he found it incredibly difficult to turn that off and just dance. He wasn’t like Annette, who could do so absentmindedly. He wasn’t like Ashe, who had to put an equal amount of effort into focusing on both. Dancing was just- beyond his reach.

He begged the Professor not to enter him for the dancing competition, and they listened. Thankfully, Flayn received the honour of competing, and he didn’t have to show anyone that his dancing had barely improved from how it was when he was just a stumbling little boy.

Dancing was also something that...it faded away in times when there was nothing to celebrate. Since the Tragedy, Dimitri had been busy. At least in a way. There had been no expensive social events in the capital, no reason to hold any dances. No need to practise his distinctly lacking skills. So he hadn’t, and they’d fallen to the side.

His skills didn’t exactly improve in the years he spent fighting to survive. Fighting was the only kind of dance he did then. It was a dance of jagged, lurching movements, desperate times pushing his body well past any of the limits he’d once taken for granted. He was more a puppet, dancing on the strings of a child puppet master, than anything that could be considered graceful.

But if fighting was an art, and the art it was most comparable to was dancing, then their final battle in the halls of Enbarr’s palace was a dance unlike any he had ever experienced before, nor one he wanted to experience again. It was frantic, hurried, stilted. Sometimes they moved at a breakneck pace, never stopping, never even taking a moment to breathe. Sometimes, he ducked into a corridor that had already been cleared out, and he could take just a moment before pure energy hurtled towards him again (and his heart cried out against this cruel, cruel dance that had turned Edelgard into a monster).

In a way, every interaction of theirs had been a dance. As children, they had danced together, and not only in action; now, he realised, every conversation had brought her twirling closer towards him. Every deflection was her dancing ever further away. At the Academy, they had also been dancing around each other. Dancing around their shared past. Dancing around everything that had changed. Dancing around a truth, buried and unknowable.

Edelgard had always been better at dancing than him. He was clumsy and faltering, and always had been. Dancing was the one place his etiquette had always really fallen down. When it had come to their dances before this, she had always been the one who’d come away better off, who learned more from their interactions.

He didn’t know if it was a testament to his own fall or hers that his dance was better this time. That when the music stopped playing, it was him who was still standing.

Edelgard had adored dancing. There were few times when she truly showed joy when she was in Fhirdiad with him, but that was one of them. Teaching him to dance was, even though she was always annoyed at him, the time she’d always smiled the most. She’d loved it more than anything else.

As the battle wound down and the dust started to settle, Dimitri wondered if maybe he should have put a little more effort into the dancing part of etiquette. If he had, maybe he would have asked his step sister to dance with him at the ball. Or maybe another time. Maybe they would have connected over it. Maybe they would have been able to come to an understanding.

Maybe this didn’t have to be a dance of death. Maybe it could have just been another sunny Sunday afternoon, with two children left to their own devices and nothing better to do (he’d asked her, at the time, why she wanted to dance - he’d always hated it, himself, but she told him that she liked being able to move. It was better than all the books her tutors always made her sit and read in silence). Dimitri hoped, at least, that the dancing Edelgard had loved so much would be the only kind of dancing he’d do for the rest of his life.


	3. Childhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Dimitri was thirteen years old, his childhood ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is for day three, using the prompt childhood! This one is a bit heavy so please take care of yourselves and be aware that there are discussions of grief and mental health problems.

When Dimitri was thirteen years old, his childhood ended.

Maybe, as a prince, the ‘childhood’ part of his lifetime was a little more flexible than it was for some. He knew, for example, that Ingrid had been doing lots of things that children didn’t normally do for many years. And Felix had been training properly to be a knight with Glenn. And Sylvain was telling him that he’d understand why girls were so great soon, because he wouldn’t be a kid forever.

Maybe he wasn’t exactly still a kid when he was thirteen. But he still felt like something about his childhood had decidedly ended when his family burned around him and he lost almost everyone he’d ever loved.

There was no more half-playing half-training with Glenn. He could no longer sit with his step mother and read a book while she sewed. He couldn’t run to find his father at the end of the day and ask if they could go riding together.

He had no parents. No children of kitchen staff who were basically his siblings, no knights who’d known him since he was born. No one who would smile and ruffle his hair when he sat alone somewhere. They all vanished. Like they’d never even been there. Like he’d never been a child at all.

Sometimes, he felt like that was exactly the case. Like he’d woken up one day, himself, with memories of someone who wasn’t actually him. The sunny young boy who’d faced every day with new vigour and new strength wasn’t him. The child who could summon a smile no matter the occasion, who knew exactly what to do when Felix started crying...that wasn’t him.

At the same time, Dimitri the young adult was not quite enough for anything. Not yet. He was thirteen years old and he couldn’t reach the top shelf on his bookcase yet (Dedue could, though, so he no longer needed to ask the kind, tall maid who had been stabbed through the chest if she could fetch things for him). 

He was thirteen years old and could not understand the way Felix’s hands balled into fists at every other provocation. He was thirteen and he couldn’t get through to Sylvain, who got in more trouble every day, or Ingrid, who was...he hadn’t seen her. She wasn’t coming out of her room.

Dimitri, no longer a child, was not yet enough of a man to take the throne. He couldn’t sort out all the turmoil inside the Kingdom. He couldn’t sort out the turmoil even in his own head. Did every adult struggle against voices telling them to do things they didn’t want to do? Did every adult see figures of the people they’d watched die around them, coming for them every time they turned away?

If they did, Dimitri decided he really didn’t like being an adult. He wondered if that was why everything had changed so quickly between him and his friends, yet no one was talking about it. He wondered if that was why he felt further and further away from human every day.

When he lost his childhood, he lost so many other things. For a handful of days, he thought that maybe he’d lost his sense of taste because of his injuries. There had been lots of burns involved, and when he burnt his tongue on hot chocolate the proper sensation always came back with time.

But then the ability to taste didn’t come back. The sweetness of sugar, the richness of stew, all of it became just another relic he could never experience again. With adulthood, he could no longer sleep through the night without shooting upright, convinced he could hear flames licking at the edges of his bedchamber. It was frustrating. It was exhausting. There were so many things in his life telling him that he was no longer the child who had once played hide and seek in the halls of Fhirdiad’s castle.

His appearance changed: parts of his hair had somehow burned away and the whole thing had to be cut off, leaving it to grow back in a way that looked completely new. His eyes were no longer full of the brightness they’d once held, his clothes were discarded as he donned black for mourning and were then later replaced with a new, harder attire. The people he spent his time with were different (everyone was gone, replaced only with Dedue, who he clung to like his life depended on it because it really did), as was the structure of his days.

Everything had changed and he was no longer a child, but at the same time, everyone refused to let him be an adult. He was suffering like an adult, he knew he was, because he didn’t think his body was big enough to hold this much pain, but no one would treat him that way.

Even when they told him that he needed to be mature enough to be able to lead an army against a rebellion, they insisted on having someone prepare his food for him because they didn’t trust him in the kitchens with a knife. He wasn’t allowed to tidy the space he lived in, or decide where he went or who he associated with.

He wasn’t allowed to claim the throne and end the suffering of all the people who were fighting on his behalf against the banditry that now ran rampant in their militarily diminished lands. He wasn’t allowed to stop the annexation of Duscur. He had to watch as the news poured in of his closest confidant’s home and people being destroyed piece by piece and he could do nothing but pretend to celebrate the bravery of soldiers who were committing atrocities he never wanted to be performed in the Kingdom’s name.

In the Tragedy of Duscur, as it quickly came to be called, Dimitri lost so many of the things that had defined his childhood. So many of the things that had allowed him to live a happy life, unburdened by the worries of the adult world. And yet, he wasn’t allowed to claim the parts of adulthood that would let him do...anything at all.

It was frustrating. It was alienating. Everything had ended and nothing had started all in a single day, and Dimitri had no idea what to do next. Where to go next. He was left in the middle in the darkness with Dedue and neither of them knew the way out.


	4. Modern AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix has, according to Sylvain, dropped off the map again. Dimitri would believe him, if Felix weren't sat at his kitchen table right then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually part of something much bigger I'm working on (that will prob be written Felix pov) but I can't get it into something resembling decent rn so pls have this

‘hey Dimitri’  
‘hi Dimitri are you around’  
‘I’m not bothering you, am I?’

The three messages from Sylvain, all of which had been sent in the space of five minutes while he was answering an email, didn’t exactly inspire Dimitri with any kind of confidence. Sylvain was the kind of person who texted him frequently or not at all, but he hoped this wasn’t...urgent.

‘Hello Sylvain,’ he replied, ‘I am around. I was just momentarily busy, so you are not bothering me at all. Is something the matter? -Dimitri’

‘ok so it’s not super urgent and I know you’re not always on the best terms w him but have you seen Felix lately? he’s not replying to my texts’

Dimitri glanced over to the table in his kitchen diner. Felix was slumped on the table with his head on a very heavy looking book. When he’d asked him what it was earlier, Felix had just groaned and mumbled something about law. Felix did not study law. ‘How long has he not been replying to your texts?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps Felix is busy at the moment. -Dimitri’

‘Felix hasn’t replied to any of my texts for two weeks, big d. I’ll admit I’m getting a lil bit worried’

Dimitri looked over at Felix again. He was no longer head first in his textbook but was instead taking notes, groaning periodically. ‘I can assure you that Felix is fine. -Dimitri’

‘oh cool yeah that’s chill thanks’  
‘how do you know he’s okay?’

Would Felix mind if Dimitri sent photographic proof? He didn’t know. ‘He is sat at my kitchen table right now. He is studying, but otherwise seems fine. -Dimitri’

‘okay yeah that scans’ Dimitri was not going to pretend he knew exactly what that meant, but Sylvain seemed like he was satisfied with that answer. ‘tell him to call me at some point, ok?’

“Felix,” Dimitri called. Felix let out a long sigh and looked up from his book. “Sylvain wants you to call him.”

“I know,” Felix said, and then he directed his attention back towards his book.

“He seems quite worried,” he said. He knew that Felix had acquired quite a habit of disappearing off the face of the earth and making himself impossible to contact. Dimitri personally thought that this wasn’t a particularly good habit, but he couldn’t tell Felix that because he’d rightly be called a hypocrite.

“He knows I’m alive,” Felix replied. “Please. This chapter is forty pages long and I really need it for my essay.”

“Will you call him when you’re done?”

“Maybe.” That meant no, then. Because Felix didn’t tend to do things unless he committed to them, because he always did the things he committed to. 

“Will you still be here if I call him when you’re done?” Middle ground. Middle ground always worked best. Getting Felix to communicate with people, especially at the end of term, was nigh on impossible, but making him exert effort to not communicate with people when the chance was being offered? That was harder.

“Fine,” Felix grumbled, and managed to loudly pick his book up off the table to signify to Dimitri that the conversation was over.

‘I’ll call you later, Sylvain,’ Dimitri wrote. ‘Felix will still be here. Does that work for you? -Dimitri’

‘yeah that’s great. You’re a pal’

Dimitri put his phone down and turned his attention back to his laptop. He was very aware that this was not the only time something like this had happened. He knew that he was far more likely to interact with Felix than Sylvain was; Sylvain wasn’t even in the same country as him right now.

That said, this was starting to become slightly ridiculous. Dimitri knew very well that Felix struggled, significantly, with things like actually keeping up with his friends. He’d been on the receiving end of the aforementioned cold shoulder for several years when Felix had decided that Dimitri was a little too much for him (not for lack of trying, Dimitri would add; there was a long time in which he’d been an absolutely awful friend himself).

But even now, when Felix wasn’t talking to Sylvain, wasn’t talking to his classmates, wasn’t really talking to anyone at all, Felix was here. And Dimitri did not understand it. There was nothing special about him, at least not that he knew of. There was nothing he could offer Felix that any of his other friends could not (in fact, he could offer significantly less; he was barely more functional than Felix at the best of times, and for the rest of the time far less functional than him).

Perhaps he would have barely thought about it at all, had Sylvain not recently taken to constantly mentioning that maybe Felix had a thing for him. The whole issue was...uncomfortable. They had been dancing around each other for years when they were teenagers, but they’d never quite managed to get anything off the ground, what with everything that had happened to the both of them.

So the prospect of anything coming back to light now...it was intimidating. Alarming, even. Dimitri knew he was not in the best place to help Felix out of the hole he periodically found himself in (mostly because he too was normally at the bottom of said hole). He couldn’t offer Felix much in the way of affection or support. But Felix didn’t...Felix didn’t seem to even care about that. He just kept showing up, even when he knew Dimitri had absolutely nothing of substance to offer him.

Felix had been in his house all afternoon. He’d showed up just after his morning classes had ended, and while he hadn’t said anything, Dimitri knew that he hated the person who taught the afternoon classes because he prioritised some students over others in giving them a turn to speak. Felix was not one of those who was prioritised, and it always frustrated him. So he’d skipped his afternoon classes and chosen to sit, mostly in silence, with Dimitri instead.

Dimitri didn’t know when he would leave, or perhaps if he would even stay for food and into the night, and honestly? He liked Felix’s presence. He wouldn’t have it any other way.


	5. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Dimitri told everyone enough times, surely they'd finally get the message that they should just leave him alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for the prompt 'alone'. I could have done Dimitri's birthday and made him happy but apparently not!

“Go away.” Those were the words that were always on his lips. He didn’t want them to get close. He wanted to be alone. He needed to be alone. If he wasn’t alone, who knew what he would do to them? Which of them he might hurt?

He didn’t think he was...dangerous. Not to them. He didn’t care about them, but there was nothing that they had done that placed them in the way of his final prize. None of them had done anything wrong. But, nevertheless, they needed to be far away from him. It wouldn’t do them any good to be attached to him. He would use them until they died, and they should know that.

He wanted to give them the chance to leave him alone. It was not their fight, it was his. So he told them to leave him, and hoped they’d heed his warning. Prayed.

But, as always, the Goddess wasn’t listening. And they didn’t leave him alone.

“Go away,” he told Felix. He hadn’t seen the man in years, until he arrived at the reunion, exhausted and older and looking utterly unlike any ghost that appeared to him. He didn’t even look like Glenn. It was comforting, in a way, that he was alive, real, not another ghost to haunt him. But Felix always...saw him. So he shouldn’t be here.

“Absolutely not,” Felix replied. And then he took up a vigil. He stood at the pillar to Dimitri’s left, so Dimitri could always see him (he knew that was the reason - Felix didn’t trust him not to go mad and attack him if he passed out of sight, he knew), and he stayed there. He left occasionally for lunch. Sometimes he slept. Sometimes, he slept on the cathedral floor.

Dimitri couldn’t fathom why he wouldn’t just leave him alone. He had told him to leave, but Felix had refused, and presented no reason why. And when he was finally dragged out of the cathedral by the Professor, Ingrid replaced him.

“Go away,” he told her.

“No, your Highness,” she said. Her voice was firm. Her resolve never did waver, did it? She was always so determined. She always thought she was doing the right thing. Yet here she was, at his side. And she refused to leave.

Couldn’t Ingrid see that the world would not look favourably upon him, once all was said and done? Perhaps he would fail, and they would see him as a monarch who had driven himself to his death, pursuing revenge past the point even a fool would turn back in the face of. If he succeeded, he would be remembered as cruel, heartless, a murderer. If she allied herself with him, she would never be…

Ingrid had always been enamoured by stories of righteous knights. He knew that she had always feared she would never be able to be a part of those stories, of course, but by siding with him she was sealing her fate. There would be no legend of the lady knight Ingrid who served a delusional king who cared nothing for his people. It didn’t ring true. But still, she wouldn’t leave him alone.

He told Ashe to leave him alone for much the same reason; Ashe refused. Mercedes, Annette, both of them point blank said that they would not leave him to stand alone in the cathedral all day and night. They had no reason to stand by him, that much he knew. He was in no way linked to their future or happiness, their dreams or ambitions. He wished they would listen. They needed to listen. He didn’t deserve their company, their pity. He didn’t want their pity, their understanding, any of it.

He couldn’t understand why they didn’t just give up. He did not want their company. He told them he didn’t. Why didn’t they listen to him?

They claimed they served him because he was their rightful king, or at least would be, one day, if this war ever ended. They spoke of loyalty, of dedication. Of doing the right thing for their country. The right thing for Fódlan. And yet, they would not take his order to leave him alone. They would not listen to his warning that his path was too dangerous for them to follow him.

In time, he would realise that he had them all wrong. They did not follow him out of a sense of duty to a shell of a man who cared nothing for their lives, future, or wellbeing. They did not follow him because they thought he would lead Faerghus to a greater future.

They would not leave him alone because they cared for him. They cared for the man that they felt they had lost five years ago, nine years ago. They cared for that man, who they all believed, to varying degrees, was still in there somewhere.

They cared, because they cared about every life. They didn’t just care about ones that were useful to win a war or to further their own ambitions. Each and every one of his former classmates, whether they wanted him to know it or not (in that, Dimitri mostly thought of Sylvain - a man who never said he cared. Never let on a single thing. Yet everything he did belied to Dimitri that he felt so deeply about where the world was going that seeing Dimitri in pain tore him apart a little), cared about him.

Perhaps Dimitri had, for a long while, been little more than a fool. He hadn’t understood that the reason his path was so dangerous, so treacherous, was because he would not let anyone walk alongside him. Travelling a mountain path in winter was dangerous, always, just as war was, but it was more dangerous when you faced down a snowstorm in the middle of the night alone than if you were attached to another.

In telling everyone to leave him alone, he’d believed he was saving them from eternal condemnation. But in the end, all he’d been doing was consigning himself to that, not considering that his fate wasn’t inevitable, so long as he let people in. So long as he stopped forcing himself to face everything alone.


	6. Last moments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were five times in the first twenty three years of Dimitri's life where he felt he was experiencing his final moments.

Dimitri’s first brush with death occurred when he was seven years old. It was something he should have been prepared for; Gustave hadn’t warned him, but he woke him up in the middle of the night and took him far out of the city before turning around and riding away. He left Dimitri in the snow and cold, where he very nearly could have died.

He barely remembered what happened next. He stumbled back to civilisation, at which point someone took him in. He was ill, bedraggled, frozen solid, and completely unrecognisable as the young Prince of Faerghus. Because why would the seven year old Prince stumble into a village on the outskirts of Fhirdiad, barely dressed beyond his nightclothes and miles from home? The people of the Kingdom had barely seen him beyond that far away view of an angelic little boy, dressed in blue and white.

Dimitri was lucky that there was a knight passing through the village at the time, a knight who knew what he looked like and knew that he was not, in fact, in the castle at Fhirdiad like everyone would presume the Prince would be. He was incredibly lucky that this knight turned right around and got him back to the capital as soon as possible, because he definitely wouldn’t have been able to express that himself.

He wouldn’t have been able to tell the people who had so readily taken him in and so easily given him up that he was the Prince; the moment he was out of the cold, the moment the danger had passed, he had come down with an absolutely horrendous fever. He was unable to speak, unable to move, barely even able to swallow.

He was so ill he felt like he was dying, probably, though he didn’t know what dying was meant to feel like, only that it was completely unlike living. That it was a bad thing that took people away. He felt like he’d come very close to that. Hazy figures on the edge of his vision, persistent voices that would not leave him alone, intense heat and intense cold and darkness that consumed everything and pain that swallowed him whole.

And then his fever broke, and he was left in his room, exactly the same as it had been nearly a week before when he left it in the early hours of the morning with little more than a light jacket and soft, indoor shoes to protect himself from what he’d thought would be the castle hallways. He was exhausted. He was weak, and it took a long time for him to recover his appetite.

“I nearly died!” Dimitri enthusiastically recounted the tale two weeks later when the healers had decided he was well enough to receive visitors. His best friend, who he’d later call Felix, was sat on the bed next to him, barely managing to hold back all the sniffling sniffling. Tears had already been shed twice since his visitors arrived.

Sylvain’s face was full of...something careful. Dimitri didn’t really know how to identify it, but he looked a bit like an adult when he looked at them like that. “Sir Gustave must have been pretty worried,” he said.

“I’d bet!” Ingrid, her legs pulled up to her chest against the side of the bed, chipped in. “Imagine if he’d managed to accidentally kill his Highness.” That, of course, was when the tears started flowing again, and the conversation was derailed. After that, they stopped talking about how close Dimitri had managed to come to death.

Dimitri did not leave his room ever again without several layers of clothing. Just in case. Gustave and his father called it a lesson well learned, one he should keep in mind for the future. It was the first of many near-death experiences.

The second time Dimitri thought he was dying, he was thirteen years old. And this time, when his final moments seemed at hand, he was fully, painfully aware of what was going on.

There was fire, and smoke, and he’d just watched almost everyone he’d ever loved vanish, half into flames and half into a pile of bodies that grew ever larger. The horses had spooked. Some of them had trampled the people trying to get away. Dimitri wasn’t even sure how he was still alive, and he couldn’t make sense of a single thing that was happening. So much was happening all at once.

When he stumbled, tripping over something or someone that could have been absolutely anything, or perhaps nothing at all, he thought he would die there and then. A face full of mud, the flames flickering around him, the shouts and screams coming ever closer. Everyone else was dead, so it only made sense that he would be next.

Except there were hands around his shoulders, a shaking grip pulling him up, steadying him, putting an arm around his shoulders and then walking onwards. A boy, a little taller than him, his blue eyes clouded with pain. He was helping him, helping him for no reason Dimitri could discern, and he was- he wasn’t looking at their surroundings. He was just moving onwards, and seemingly couldn’t see the attackers drawing ever closer to them.

Feeling frantic and shaky, exhausted and utterly terrified, Dimitri pushed the boy to the ground, falling on top of him as a fire spell flew overhead. Dimitri managed to bite back a scream as he hit the ground. He didn’t know if the spell had hit him directly or just grazed him, he could have sworn he saw it pass, but he felt like the skin on his back was burning and he couldn’t do anything about it.

The pain didn’t stop. The blows didn’t stop. Dimitri could barely even fathom how he was still alive, he didn’t think it was possible to withstand this much pain. As a blow struck him on the head, his limbs went limp. He couldn’t do any more than this. He couldn’t even save his own life. He was going to die here.

He did not die at the scene of the Tragedy that claimed so many other lives. He didn’t burn with the other bodies, perish with the knights, or die alongside the king. After he was hit on the head, he lost most of his awareness of what happened next, but the boy who had saved him (Dedue. His name was Dedue, he soon learned) said that they had stumbled away from the scene together once the attackers had gone, presuming the whole group was dead. They had only survived because they had appeared so close to death already.

Dimitri survived, once more dodging the final blow, once more eluding the grip of a final breath. He would not get so close to death for another five years.

Five years later, Dimitri was ready for death. He had been condemned, that much he knew, for a crime he had not committed. A crime he would gain exactly nothing from committing. Why would he kill his uncle, useless as he was? If he really had been responsible for the Tragedy, he would gain far more from torturing him for information about the ringleaders than killing him in a rage.

So, yes, he was ready for his death. He was prepared. It was coming, and he knew it, sat locked in the bedroom he’d nearly died in once before. It hadn’t changed much since the Tragedy. He wasn’t sure he’d actually lived in it, for one.

He was dying with regrets, of course. There was so much he still had left to do. People who still hadn’t paid for what they had done, criminals who remained unpunished for crimes they had committed long ago. But there was nothing he could do about it. This was the end, and he had failed.

Dimitri did not die that day. He did not die that day, nor the next, nor the one after that. He felt like he was ready to keel over and die at any moment, but his body would not stop moving. His heart would not stop beating.

He felt like he’d died anyway. He’d failed his family, he’d failed his people. He’d failed in the face of every reason he still had to be alive, and now no one could even know he still lived. He was as good as dead, in the end, and it was easy enough to convince himself he’d died really. There was nothing left for him in the land of the living, and he was just a corpse with more corpses to pile up before his body stopped breathing.

He did not feel alive again until he faced death in the eyes once more. When that little girl came up behind him and told him it was his time to die, he felt for the fourth time in his life that he was about to take his final breaths.

It was a shame, he thought. A shame that he was unable to fulfil his only desire and get revenge for everything that had occurred. But it was also fair. If revenge was how he had chosen to live his life that no longer felt like a life, then revenge was how he would die. He had killed someone meaningful to this girl, and for that he would pay. It was a pitiable turn of events, but not unpredictable. He would die under a blade of revenge.

But again, he survived. Again, he cheated death, somehow, against everything he expected. Against everything he wanted. His final moments refused to come to pass, and the regret he felt at that time...perhaps he wanted to live after all. Perhaps he wasn’t just a corpse, a shell. Perhaps he was so much more. He was alive.

(He wished it hadn’t taken so much death for him to realise that)

There was but one more time that year that Dimitri felt he was experiencing his final moments. When Edelgard’s knife plunged into his shoulder, he worried just for a moment that maybe it hit something important. Maybe he wouldn’t walk out of this throne room.

But as soon as the thought crossed his mind, the battle was over. Won. He would go on to live another day, and another, and another. He closed his eyes and smiled, very slightly, as the sunlight streamed over his face; he would not experience again what he thought were his final moments for a very, very long time.


	7. Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix has been tending to their son all day, and Dimitri knows he desperately needs to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt fill is for day seven, and it's set part way through Ostodvandi's fic You Don't Know How Lovely You Are, which is absolutely fantastic and heartbreaking and I would 100% recommend it if you haven't read it before! https://archiveofourown.org/works/20492345
> 
> If you haven't read it, all you need to know is that Adrien is Felix and Dimitri's son, and Dimitri has been raising him without Felix, and Adrien got very ill on his 10th birthday.

“How is he doing?” Dimitri asked. He’d hurried over to Adrien’s room as soon as he could, the moment he’d been able to get free of all his duties for the day. He regretted that there was so much to do when his son was ill, but the world wouldn’t stop moving, especially when he had so many visitors.

Felix was, just as Dimitri had expected, still at Adrien’s bedside. He was sat in one of two chairs that had been pulled up next to the boy’s bed. At his side was a low table, filled with vials of medicine and a large jug of water, now half empty.

He didn’t exactly know why Felix was there. He’d always been under the impression that it was Adrien, above everything, that Felix regretted. That Adrien was the cause of...everything that had fallen apart between them.

Felix always vanished like the frost on the grass when the sun struck it once Adrien’s birthday was over. There one moment, gone the next. Like he didn’t want to be there at all. Dimitri had expected the same this time, and yet...here he was. Still at Adrien’s side.

“He’s resting,” Felix said, his voice hushed, his gaze fixed on Adrien’s sleeping body. His chest was rising and falling evenly. He seemed okay. He was alive. He was safe. “I think he’ll be okay. A healer saw him earlier.”

“I’ll have to speak to them,” he said. He needed to know exactly what the healers thought had happened, or if there was anything that he could do to help him recover. “And thank them. I’m sure attending to him isn’t the easiest task they’ve had this year.” He was sure Felix got the message; while Dimitri deeply appreciated that he was in any way inclined to protect their son, he’d probably not made things easy for the staff. He knew how Felix could be.

“You could say that,” Felix grumbled. “It was a while before he slept evenly. And everyone under the sun kept trying to see him before they left. It could have been dangerous for him, or disturbed his recovery.”

“I understand, Felix,” he said. “But it’s fine now. He’ll be fine.” Dimitri didn’t quite know if he was convincing himself or Felix of that. Or perhaps the Goddess, if she had any kind of influence over something so simple as this.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Felix’s head was nodding slightly in his chair next to Adrien’s bed. “Felix, you should take this chance to rest yourself. I can watch him now.”

Felix immediately sat up straight in his chair, running one hand through his hair. He hadn’t untied it, but Dimitri could see its usual structure coming loose. He didn’t know if Felix had moved from this spot at all today; he doubted it. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll keep watching him.”

“Felix,” he said, reaching out for Felix’s hand. Felix accepted the gesture, and for the first time actually looked over at him. He looked like hell. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair all over his face. He honestly looked like he was about to pass out. But his eyes, those eyes that Dimitri could never refuse...Felix wasn’t going to back down on this.

The moment was broken when Adrien groaned, and Felix’s attention immediately snapped back to him. Adrien had turned over, onto his right side, and was mumbling, his legs moving as he tried to kick his blankets off. A second later, he whimpered, the sound cracking a little.

“Shh, shh, Adrien, it’s okay,” Felix said, tugging his hand out of Dimitri’s grip. Dimitri watched, helpless, as Felix adjusted Adrien’s blankets, helping him into a half-seated position. “Support his head,” he ordered.

Dimitri did as asked, watching as Felix poured a little water from the jug into a shallow dish and raised it to Adrien’s mouth. Adrien was trembling with the effort of even being upright, his eyes squeezed closed. But he drank a little, and very carefully, Felix helped Dimitri lower him back onto the bed and pulled the blankets up to his chin again.

Felix practically collapsed into his seat as Adrien settled, slowly, his breathing now far more uneven than before but still going. He was still breathing. He was alive. Felix let out a heavy, shaky sigh, and when Dimitri looked over, he was trembling, his hands shaking. He looked on the verge of tears. It had been...so long since Dimitri had seen him like this. It felt like a lifetime away.

“Felix,” he mumbled, keeping his voice as soft as he could so as not to disturb their son. Carefully, he pulled Felix into his arms, keeping his embrace light but hoping it could provide some kind of comfort.

It took an age, but eventually, Felix’s tense shoulders started to relax just a little. He wasn’t crying, just about, but it had been close. His breathing evened out slightly from the sharp, short breaths that Dimitri knew meant he had been forcing himself not to panic. “I can watch him, Felix. I’ll wake him if he needs you.”

Felix said nothing, but his relaxed posture gave Dimitri his answer. Felix was exhausted; he deserved this. He’d watched over and attended to their son all day, after all. Slowly, Felix’s breathing evened out, and he sleepily settled his head in Dimitri’s lap.

It was very much unlike him, but Dimitri couldn’t bring himself to care. In fact, it was...nice. An intimacy that was so rare between them, these days, when they only saw each other for a handful of days in a year. He understood, of course, and he would wait forever if that was what Felix needed, but it made him cherish these moments more.

Slowly, carefully, he reached his hands out to stroke Felix’s hair. First, he gently removed the hair tie, letting Felix’s hair spill out over his shoulders and onto Dimitri’s lap. As he ran his fingers through each strand, as gently as he could, Felix barely even moved, let alone stirred. A testament to how exhausted he was, Dimitri supposed. The tense, sad lines of his face had relaxed, just a little, and Dimitri smiled.

“Rest well, Felix,” he murmured. “I love you.” As usual, Felix returned nothing but silence, but hearing his breathing, soft from sleep, the silence didn’t feel as empty to Dimitri as usual.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! :) This fic is now complete, but I'd really appreciate it if you could please leave a comment because it means a whole lot. It'd also be rad if you'd consider following me on twitter @samariumwriting where I yell a lot about writing stuff


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